Monday, June 11, 2012

A group of Kenyan students re-enact Bill Buckner’s error leading to the Mets winning run in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. The students were interested in making a movie about a famous American sporting event. After watching both real live clips the students voted on Buckner’s error over the “Music City Miracle.” They loved the experience and want to make a second movie.

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God bless them for their enthusiasm. Nice to see that someone in Africa is thinking about baseball. But it's a shame Buckner is remembered this way. He was a really nice player for so long.

He's probably the worst player to ever put up 10,000 PA in his career. He was received warmly by Red Sox fans on many different occasions, but still played the victim (as late as last year). And I'll be happy to let him off the hook for allowing the grounder to pathetically dribble through his legs (they were done by that point anyway), but I'm not forgetting the fact he was a total black hole on offense all series long.

I remember Buckner getting Lee Elia really pissed at him a couple of times (once after Billy got hit he told the Cub pitcher to throw at the opposing pitcher, Lee took offense at Buckner's attempt to usurp the manager's discretion). Lee was such an even-tempered guy I was surprised at his reaction.

I have no idea what Music City Miracle is, but I don't follow sports in Salzburg, Austria.

And the man knew how to put the ball in play. I would guess that putting the ball in play in 91% of his career PAs (453 Ks, 450 BB in 10000+ PAs) is the record for anyone who played as long as he did.

Lloyd Waner has him beat, putting the ball in play almost 93 percent of the time. There may be others. (I just looked up a couple of long-career guys who I thought might be comparable, Waner, Sewell, Traynor, Sam Rice).

Edit: Initially I had Traynor ahead of Buckner, but I was looking at the numbers incorrectly.

It's when the referees decided to #### up and allow a forward lateral and let the Titans score a last-second kick-off touchdown to beat the Buffalo Bills in their last playoff appearance.

As a Bills fan, I have SO MUCH RAGE about the end of that game. Most of it is directed at Wade Phillips - RUN DOWN THE MOTHER####ING CLOCK BEFORE YOU KICK THE FIELD GOAL, WADE - but indeed, the referees botched the ending.

Wade Phillips was ultimately the guy most at fault, though. You bench your starting quarterback for the playoffs, you give the other team time to score, bad things are going to happen.

As far as I can tell there has never been a single beneficial call going Chicago's way (in any sport) in any important game ever since Merkle's Boner. We basically used up all our ju-ju to get ourselves that last championship.

Also, there was that weird play with AJ Pierzynski in the 2005 ALCS, where he struck out (called by the home plate ump) but ran to first base and was allowed to stay there after the umps conferred. It was a questionable call at best.